The medical field and their practices are constantly evolving and trying to create new more innovated ways to safely help people with their illnesses.  In the past hundred years the world has comes leaps and bounds with the treatments that are used to help people with their diseases.  One field of medicine that has become more widely researched and studied is the mental health field.   The techniques and treatments that have been created are innovative and are truly improving people’s way of life.  Only a hundred years ago doctors were prescribing patients with cocaine to battle depression, this radical change in treatments shows how far doctors have come.  Another profound method to help cure people of their mental health illnesses, specifically hysteria during the turn of the century, was the resting cure.  

The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilmores’s depicts, from a women perspective, what the resting cure is actually like.  The story takes place in a secluded summer home, where the woman, who is unnamed throughout the story, secretly writes about her time spent at this house.  Her husband, John, diagnosed her with “temporary nervous depression” (300), and as a method of treatment he suggest the resting cure.  She can do very little physical activity and no intellectual activity, such as writing so she must do it in secrete,  John wants her to spend her time in bed either sleeping or resting.  This short story shows the unfair treatment of women in the late 19th century and shows the madness that the main character ultimately succumbs too.  

From the beginning of the text, the superior nature of the narrator’s husband is shown through gendered subtext.  The narrator begins the story describing the home that the couple is living in for the summer and expressing that she believes there is something off about the home.  She asks many questions about the home like, “Why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?” the narrator observes that her husband, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (299).  Even though in relationships it is healthy to laugh and have fun together, the amusement that John gets from his wife’s concerns are discoursing. As a reader his actions are disheartening because he is patronizing his wife, and also disvalues her feelings by laughing at them.  This statement and her reaction is depressing because she believes that it is normal for her husband to make light of her feelings.   The narrator believes that a normal characteristic of marriage includes a husband belittle her emotions, and not be more considerate of her views. These initial lines of the story make it apparent that she views her husband as superior to herself.

The narrator explains that her husband and brother, who are both doctors, diagnosed her “temporary nervous depression” with “slight hysterical tendency,”(300) because of her condition, she believes that she is not a good enough wife to her husband.  She is being treated with the resting cure which means she is unable to do work of any kind, including writing or any intellectual activity, although she is able to do some exercise but she mostly she sleeps all day.  By being treated with the resting cure she is unable to perform traditional wifely duties around the home.  The narrator expresses her discontent with herself, “It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way! I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I m a comparative burden already!”(301). She sees herself as an incomplete person with no purpose to her life.  The use of multiple exclamation points shows how she is crying out with disappointment of herself.  Being treated in this type of method it has stripped her of her identity as a mother and a wife.  During this time period women were expected to have families and to care for them.  Her expectations of herself and what society expects her to do are being impeded on by this treatment, there by deteriorating her self-worth and purpose.  

Women around the world have been seen as unequal to their male counterpart for centuries.  In an article written by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese called “Women’s Status: A century for Enormous Change” she writes about the evolving social status of women throughout the 20th century.  In the beginning she discusses the inequalities that women faced in the early 20th century which is around when the “Yellow Wall Paper” takes place.  The paper states that, “White American women lacked many of the rights that their male in could claim as their birthright:  They could not vote in federal elections;… they were denied access to many educational institutions and occupations;… and if they married, their rights to hold property in their own name were restricted” (Fox-Genovese).  This passage of text relates to the story because it shows how detrimental the narrator losing her self-worth was.  Women were not allowed to do many things, as the quote says but the one place that they were able to dominate and have a sense of control of was the household.  This was there sole domain and the narrator being unable to be affective and useful in this manner, means she has nothing else to do.

The unfair and oppressive behavior towards women ultimately leads to the main characters descent to madness.  Her cut off from intellectual activity and her freedom being stripped away made her wallow in her own thoughts about the room that she spent most of her time in.  She spends all of her time in the room, and around the wallpaper that it has completely fixated her as she lays in her bed,” for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.  On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is constant irritant to a normal mind” (306).  The resting cure which has stripped her of things that makes her happy has made the narrator hallucinate out of true boredom.  The belief at this time that women were weak and the only way to fix them was by making them do nothing, is making the narrators life more miserable.  At this point in the story she has not completely lost her min but her obsession with the wall paper is apparent, and she is starting to become mad.

As the narrator spends more time resting her obsession grows, and her mind becomes lost, which can be deducted as her writing becomes more frantic.  Her madness becomes self-consuming and as she believes the wallpaper is trapping a woman behind its pattern.  The narrator started the story as a sane woman, who was being forced to rest all the time under the authority of her husband, to one that has completely lost herself.  The story being in first person shows the reader that the character is becoming more obsessive and frantic about the wallpaper the tone and writing style changes.  The story picks up again with her writing:

I think that woman gets out in the daytime!

And I’ll tell you why-privately- I’ve seen her!

I can see her out of every one of my windows!

It is the same women, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight

Her well written and descriptive sentences that started the story have changed to short frantic sentences to show how fixated she is on the wall paper.  The use of the word “privately”  is concerning because this story is written as her personal journal, that no one else is reading, her madness is making her distrusting of everyone around her and even in her own thought she believes people are watching her.

The madness that the narrator ultimately succumbs to is not an anomaly for this type of treatment but happened to many women who were prescribed the resting cure.  In a journal entry written by Julia Mueller published in The American Journal of Nursing she recounted her time in a hospital undergoing treatment for being “a little nervous”, and was prescribed the resting cure.  In the beginning of the journal entry the patient makes sure to reassure the audience that she is well, “I’m alright I am.  Sure I am I’m fine I am.  I’ve been a little nervous but I’m alright now. I’m having a rest cure.  That’s what they tell me”(Mueller).  Starting the journal off in this kind of ways creates doubt and some skepticism from the audience.  It seems that she is repeating what the doctors are saying to her, her repetition makes it seem that she is trying to convince herself that this is the right treatment for her and she is ok.  By the end of the journal you truly see her sanity start to break much like the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper”.  The writer of this entry ends it with saying, “I’m calm… I’m swell... I’m not screaming… I’m resting”(Mueller).  This journal entry verifies the narrator decent to madness was common for most women to fall victim to, because of this oppressive inhumane treatment that was normal for women at the turn of the century.

Charlotte Perkins Gilmore’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” was an inspiring piece at the turn of the century that brought light to the discriminatory treatment of women at the time.  The author shows the sexism and the madness of the main character through gendered subtext, and changing the tone of the writing.  This story was written at a time were the oppression of women was every day, Gilmore’s story helped shape new opinions of treatments that are viable and humane to help women suffering from mental disorders.
